All of a sudden summer was here. Out of nowhere, it seemed after a spring dominated by snow and hail. Sometimes it felt like summer would just skip a year. Avoiding Sweden because of COVID-19 perhaps.

But no, after waiting so long, the days got crazy long with almost 24/7 sunlight and flowers blooming in all the colors of the rainbow. I might be a winter person first, but summer truly is magnificent!

We’ve been hiking a bit less, mostly because I go into shut down when it’s too hot :D. Instead, we’ve been paddling with the dogs and swimming in the lakes. The lake by our house is already nice and warm, some bigger ones are still a bit chilly- for me at least, I see others going in without the blink of an eye :). The challenge now it to get to sleep in time in order to be able to get up VERY early so we can hike or swim with the dogs before the heat.

My vegetable plants are growing quickly now, flowering and looking stronger. The cold spring wasn’t easy on them and we had some worries if anything would grow, but right now it looks very good. It’s still challenging compared to our garden in Belgium- still learning what works here and when or how to start. Because of the travel bans and health concerns, we’re not traveling this year so we’ve been working a lot in the garden and already seeing huge differences. Hard work pays off! 🙂
I got the tip of perhaps using a garden journal to keep track of what works and when certain plants need extra attention or help and that sounds like a great idea.

We wisely didn’t name Joeri’s kayak ‘the yellow submarine’- with the first attempt he already fell in. So now I call it the ‘adventure banana’ 😀 😀

PS: If you’re interested in tips & tricks for paddling with dogs, I wrote a blog all about our experiences with sup dogs on DOGvision.eu